Fraud (Trials without a Jury) Bill

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time. The Government are committed to rebalancing the criminal justice system in favour of the law-abiding majority. The Bill enables the most serious and complex fraud trials to be heard by a judge alone to ensure that justice is done in those sorts of cases. A trial by a judge sitting alone will only be appropriate for a small number of cases—our estimate is about half a dozen cases each year. The maximum would be about 20, but we do not anticipate that we are likely to get close to that figure. To give us plenty of margin, and so as not to mislead anyone, that is the figure that we have considered. If we are able to have such trials, it will be possible to expose the full criminality of complex and serious fraud cases in court, and our criminal justice system will have the tools that it needs to deal properly with such major crime. The Bill is not a general attack on jurors. There is no wedge—this is not the thin end or any size of wedge. We are discussing a particular policy to deal with a particular issue. About 30,000 contested trials take place each year. The Bill is likely to affect half a dozen of them. In the magistrates court each day in our country, a district judge often decides verdicts, so no fundamental principle is being breached in the Bill. What is unique in this case is that there is a long history of reports by Lord Roskill, Lord Justice Auld and others calling for a new way of dealing with complex and serious fraud cases. No such reports have been produced about other areas of criminal law. The Bill is not a general attack on jurors; it deals with a specific issue in a way that is manageable for the courts and that ensures that justice is delivered.